The Boys from Brazil (film)

Infobox Film
name = The Boys from Brazil


caption = Promotional poster for The Boys From Brazil.
imdb_id =
producer = Martin Richards
Stanley O'Toole
director = Franklin J. Schaffner
writer = Ira Levin (novel)
Heywood Gould (screenplay)
starring = Gregory Peck
Sir Laurence Olivier
James Mason
music = Jerry Goldsmith
cinematography = Henri Decae
editing = Robert Swink
distributor = Twentieth Century Fox (USA)
released = flagicon|USA October 5, 1978
runtime = 123 min.
language = English
budget =
amg_id = 1:6881

"The Boys from Brazil" is a 1978 Academy Award-nominated thriller made by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and produced by Stanley O'Toole and Martin Richards with Robert Fryer as executive producer. The screenplay, by Heywood Gould, is loosely based on the novel "The Boys from Brazil" by Ira Levin. It bears no relation to another film "Boys from Brazil" from 1993 [http://imdb.com/title/tt0106472/] . The music score was by Jerry Goldsmith and the cinematography by Henri Decae. As of August 2006, an updated remake of this film is in the works with New Line Cinema, featuring director Brett Ratner and screenwriters Richard Potter and Matthew Stravitz. Production is expected to start late in early 2008. [cite web | url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4781351.stm| title = Boys from Brazil Set for Remake | publisher = BBC News|date=2006-08-10| accessdate = 2007-12-30]

The film was shot on location in Vienna, Austria; England; Portugal and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA.

Plot

The film follows the attempts of aging Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Sir Laurence Olivier) to discover and thwart a diabolical plan by surviving Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) to clone Adolf Hitler.

When well-intentioned young Barry Kohler stumbles upon a secret sect of Third Reich war criminals holding clandestine meetings in South America, he alerts Ezra Lieberman by phone. Lieberman is well aware that Dr. Mengele is alive and in hiding, but is highly skeptical otherwise.

Kohler is discovered and killed. Lieberman begins following the trail of the Nazis, traveling throughout Europe and North America to investigate the suspicious deaths of a number of civil servants. He meets several widows and is amazed to find an uncanny resemblance in their adopted, black-haired, blue-eyed sons.

Lieberman's investigations unnerve Mengele's superiors, who demand that he abort his scheme. But the mad doctor has spent nearly thirty years pursuing this, having acquired skin and blood samples from Hitler to use as DNA in a sinister, far-ahead-of-its-time plan to recreate the Führer body and soul.

For him it is now or never. Mengele risks traveling to rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where one of the young Hitler clones lives on a farm. There he murders the boy's father and lies in wait for his hated nemesis Lieberman, who is on his way.

They fight savagely until Mengele gains the upper hand. At that point, young Bobby arrives home from school. It is Mengele's first look in person at one of his "boys." Bobby can tell from the carnage that something is amiss. Lieberman tells him that Mengele has killed his father and to notify the police. The cruel young boy has other ideas. He sets a pack of vicious Doberman dogs on Mengele, relishing his bloody death and avenging his father's death.

Lieberman is encouraged by fellow Nazi hunters to expose the scheme and turn over a list identifying the names and whereabouts of the other "boys from Brazil" from around the world, so that they can be systematically killed before growing up. But they are mere children, in Lieberman's opinion, so he destroys the list. The film ends with Bobby happily developing photos he took during the dog attack.

Principal cast

*Gregory Peck : Dr. Josef Mengele
*Sir Laurence Olivier : Ezra Lieberman
*James Mason : Eduard Seibert
*Lilli Palmer : Esther Lieberman
*Uta Hagen : Frieda Maloney
*Steve Guttenberg : Barry Kohler
*Denholm Elliott : Sidney Beynon
*Gunter Meisner : Farnbach
*Rosemary Harris : Frau Doring
*Anne Meara : Mrs. Curry
*Prunella Scales : Mrs. Harrington
*Michael Gough : Mr. Harrington
*John Dehner : Henry Wheelock
*Jeremy Black : Jack Curry/Simon Harrington/Erich Doring/Bobby Wheelock

Award and nominations

Academy Awards Nominations
*Academy Award for Best Actor - Sir Laurence Olivier
*Academy Award for Film Editing - Robert Swink
*Academy Award for Original Music Score - Jerry GoldsmithGolden Globe Awards Nomination
*Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama - Gregory PeckAcademy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Saturn Award Nominations
* Best Science Fiction Film
* Best Actor - Sir Laurence Olivier
* Best Director - Franklin J. Schaffner
* Best Music - Jerry Goldsmith
* Best Supporting Actress - Uta Hagen
* Best Writing - Heywood Gould

Trivia

*The character of Ezra Lieberman (Yakov Liebermann in the novel) is thought by many to be modeled on the famous real life Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.Fact|date=December 2007
*Olivier plays a Nazi hunter in this film whilst in "Marathon Man" (1976), he played Dr. Christian Szell, an evil Nazi doctor. Szell was known as 'The White Angel', whereas Mengele was known as the 'Angel of Death.'
*Both of the lead actors, Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, played General Douglas MacArthur in films produced roughly the same time as "The Boys From Brazil": Peck in "MacArthur" (1977) and Olivier in "Inchon" (1981). Coincidentally, Jerry Goldsmith was the composer for each of those films as well as for "The Boys from Brazil".
*Peck's performance as the evil Mengele contrasts with the heroic roles he was most famous for playing, notably Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird". The role was also a complete inversion of the actor's real-life beliefs, which were strongly devoted to tolerance, civil rights, and generally liberal political activities.
*Bruno Ganz, who plays Professor Bruckner, went on to play Adolf Hitler in "Der Untergang" (2004).
*Gunter Meisner, who plays Farnbach, also went on to play Adolf Hitler in the 1983 miniseries adaptation of Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War."
*Jeremy Black plays four teenaged Adolf Hitler clones; two of which are American, one British, and the other German (in all, Black performs using three different accents).

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0077269|title=The Boys from Brazil